DanteGTZ wrote:A 25hp LOSS (between the 2.3 HO and 2.4 TwinCam) and having to rewire certain things to make it work just sounds dumb. I wonder how they got the crank pickup to work properly.........
Anyhoo - The best treatment of this car would be to get a true High Output Quad4 back in there. Most of the time the 96+ Twin Cam guys want to swap in 2.3 head/cams - Not the other way around. LOL.
My '97 Z-24 Cavvy had a grenaded engine when I bought it for $120 -original 5-speed car with zero rust, manual windows, and power sun-roof. Everything I would have ordered if I had bought it brand new, except for the color (pull-me-over red, with light grey interior
). I had a 2.3 block with a warped head and absurdly high miles to throw into the car, and later found that, aside from two valves that cost ~$6 each from NAPA, the 2.4 head was good. A little modification, and the 2.4 head fits the Quad block just fine, although it felt like compression went down a bunch (turbo ready!
). Here are some notes I can remember off of the top of my head from that build:
-The Quad alternator will NOT bolt onto the 2.4 block -use the ignition control module's pink or pink/black wire (or any other ignition-hot-only wire) to power the alternator's field coils (small red or brown wire to alternator) and find a battery hot-at-all-times large gauge wire for alternator power, it will work fine.
-IIRC, the Quad's A/C compressor also will not bolt on to the 2.4.
-The 2.4's power steering pump is 20 times better than the after-thought half-baked
crap design with the pulley used on the Quad, be thankful for direct-drive!
-25HP loss sucks, but the 2.4 has better mid-range torque, so not a terrible trade off. I would take the 2.3 personally though...
-The 2.4's crank trigger is indeed located in a different spot in the block, but the 2.4's crank has the notches cut into it in different spots too -so long as you keep the 2.4 crank in the 2.4 block, it is all good, no mystery there. The issue arises when swapping the 2.4 crank into the bigger-bored 2.3 block to achieve a 2.5 "Twin-Cam Quad", or bigger if further bored and/or stroked.
-The worst part about the 2.4 is the water-pump. On the Quads, they used an intermediate shaft with its own bearing to run the splined water pump from the toothed timing-chain-driven sprocket. By the time the Twin Cam rolled out, some penny-pinching bean-counting pencil-pushing @$$-O realized they could save .20 cents per car if they did away with the intermediate drive component and drive the water-pump directly off of the timing chain. The downfall? On the Quads, it takes ~35 minutes to replace the water pump, and the pump could be made a little cheaper with less wasted material because it didn't have a sprocket on the end of it. On the 2.4, you have to break into the timing case (which means removing the engine mount, supporting the engine, and possibly re-timing the cams, and messing around with the nightmare tensioner). Now it takes half a day.
And my Z-24? I eventually lost the oil-pump on that engine, replaced it with a newer ('01, with higher compression and no EGR, from the factory
) 2.4 Twin Cam, and a little IHI turbo and top-mount intercooler. The car can't keep traction through the first few gears if I lay into it hard... 2.4s have a lot of potential too...
Congrats on the car, it looks great. Fix the rust and save her!